Entries from October 2010 ↓

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Performance artist and style icon meets Pixie Lott.

Speakers, John Humphrys, Carl Emmerson

JH: We already know half a million jobs are going to go so I suppose the answer is it won’t be quite the same or do we know half a million jobs are going to go?

CE: We do know it’s going to be extremely painful. What central government spends on public services by the end of this parliament on current government projections is going to be 14% lower after economy wide inflation than what it spends at the moment and because of the government’s desire to protect some areas of spending such as the health service, overseas aid and not to cut too deep the budgets of schools and defence the cuts elsewhere could be as high as a third.

JH: Now you said cuts after inflation because one reads all the time that actually, or from certain people anyway, that actually these aren’t really cuts, spending will increase, they just won’t increase as fast as inflation?

CE: Total public spending is going to grow in cash terms but I think we care a). about how much of that is inflation, how much of that will take account of inflation and it’s also important to remember there are some cost pressures on government that don’t deliver better public services, we have rising debt interest bills very very sharply, we have a rising number of people hitting the state pension age because that’s where the baby boomers are at now. So that means what we spend on public services, once we take into account inflation and once we take account of these rising debt interest bills and other pressures is definitely going to be cut, it’s set to be cut for 6 years in a row, we’ve only ever done that for two years in a row at any point since the Second World War.

JH: And those debt interest bills, is it true that one pound in every four the government spends now is repaying debt?

CE: Erm no it’s much lower than that, it’s not that bad. But it’s clearly much higher than what it was before the crisis started. We’ve doubled the amount of debt we have, therefore we’re roughly doubling the amount we pay on servicing that debt.

JH: And these jobs that are going to go, do they have to go quickly in order to save this money or can they be spread out over a long time and can most of them go as a result of natural attrition?

CE: The cuts to public spending are pretty linear over the next four years. The government at the moment is not choosing to frontload the cuts or backload the cuts…

JH: Sorry can you do that in slightly less jargon, linear and…what does that mean?

CE: So the government isn’t choosing to do say all of the cuts next year, it’s not choosing to wait until the end of the parliament, it’s a pretty steady path throughout the parliament so the pain is coming equally, additional pain is coming equally each year.

JH: Right and it does mean people will be fired as opposed to jobs not being filled when they retire?

CE: I think the government will no doubt rely on natural wastage as much as they can, it also we know be trying to squeeze the pay bill by keeping down wage growth rather than keeping down numbers. It remains to be seen how much that can actually deliver and how much you can actually do through actively getting people out rather than just relying on natural wastage.

JH: And is it possible to say at this stage, I know we haven’t had the detail yet obviously, but is it possible to say at this stage with some certainty that people who will suffer moist are those who are on benefits of one kind or another?

CE: We know the government will be trying to cut some benefit spending to try and lessen the pain for public services so those people will lose. Probably the biggest losers from the spending review will be those people who benefit from the public services that get withdrawn. Some public services will not be as good as they would have been, for example we know that higher education is going to be much more expensive, the people who benefit from those public services are going to be the biggest losers.

Speakers, Martha Kearney, Nigel Ward.

NW: I completely support it [son’s comments to Cameron] I think this is an absolutely appalling decision, which reflects one thing and that is the intent of the Royal Air Force to take away the Royal Navy fleet air arm and supplant it with their own land based capability which of course they cannot do, so Kris is absolutely right, but what’s worse is that if this Harrier decision does go through and is not reversed there is possibly going to be a great exodus of the cream of our flying boys from the Royal Navy fleet air arm and we are going to be left high and dry of there is a long gap before the next aircraft becomes available.

MK: You’ve been a senior figure in the naval air arm, you commanded 108 Air squadron during the Falklands War, you were then senior Sea Harrier advisor, why do you think this aircraft is so valuable?

NW: It is because of its flexibility, its inherent flexibility, when we went to the Falklands, the whole world including most of the Royal Air Force was saying they are going to get their bottoms smacked because they’ve got no airpower, well what we had were 20 Sea Harrier aircraft, and the Argentines had 200 military aircraft against us and so we had a battle on our hands which we won because first of all we were very good in fighter combat, secondly, from the carrier you can generate many more sorties per day than you can from an airfield ashore because of the manner in which we do our business and so although we were totally outnumbered we managed to put enough aircraft in the sky all the time to oppose the opposition so you can say almost without any question that the Harrier, or the Sea Harrier as it was called, the Navy Harrier, ensured success in the Falklands.

MK: But don’t times change, and don’t aircraft get retired at various points, and there will be replacements for the Harrier.

NW: Well yes they do, but the Harrier, the current Harrier in service with the Royal Navy and Royal Air force squadrons has a life expectancy up to 2025 and little money needs to be spent on it to keep it in service for that time, get rid of the Harrier now, you start to lose a huge amount of expertise, if the expertise dies, which it will very quickly, starting again is not as easy as it sounds.

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